Great Tit

Great Tit 

(Parus major), a bird of the family Paridae and the order Passeriformes. The body averages 15 cm in length and weighs 20 g. The coloring is a combination of black, green, white, light blue, and yellow. It is distributed in Europe, Asia (excluding the north), and northwestern Africa.

The great tit is both migratory and nonmigratory. It lives in deciduous and mixed forests, parks, shrubs, river thickets, and, in the desert, in saxaul. The nest is usually built in the hollows of trees. The birds nest from the end of March to the beginning of April. Each clutch contains nine to 13 eggs. The female sits on the nest for 13 days, and there are two clutches a year. The main food is insects. During the period of feeding the nestlings, a pair of adults brings in up to 1,000 insects a day. The birds are very useful and should be protected and attracted.

REFERENCE

Ptitsy Sovetskogo Soiuza, vol. 5. Edited by G. P. Dement’ev and N. A. Gladkov. Moscow, 1954.

A. M. SUDILOVSKAIA